U.s. Facing Indian War Over Land Dispute Begun By Kit Carson

HARDROCK, ARIZ. — Tom and Helen Yazzie`s spanking-new $66,000 house supplied by the U.S. government here on the Navajo Indian Reservation is a match for most suburban ranch houses in America.

A modest chandelier hangs over the cozy breakfast nook. There`s a dishwasher, a refrigerator and, in the spacious living room with its spotless wall-to-wall carpet, a built-in wall outlet for cable television.

But there are several things keeping the Yazzies from living the American dream. There is no electricity to light the chandelier and run the appliances. There are no water or sewer lines, either. The Yazzies haul their water in 5 gallon jugs from a nearby well.

They can`t flush the toilets, anyway, because there is no septic tank. Instead, a wooden outhouse stands a few yards from the door of the ranch house`s attached garage. The garage is of minimal use, the Yazzies said through an interpreter, because they can`t afford a car.

Instead of a television set, Helen Yazzie, 51, a ``traditional`` Navajo tribeswoman, has set up her rug-making loom in front of the cable-television outlet.

Percy Deal, president of the Hardrock chapter of the 160,000-member Navajo Nation, said the Yazzies are ``living symbols`` of a wrenching land controversy that embroils the Navajos and their neighbors, the Hopi Indians, who share the United States` largest Indian reservation.

The government has launched a crash program to solve by next July 7 a territorial feud that has raged between the Navajo and the Hopi for at least 103 years, a legal battle born in the days of President Chester Arthur and Kit Carson.

Reservation officials say the Yazzies live in a modern house with no utilities because the federal project to move Navajos from Hopi land has built houses faster than power lines, sewers and other services can reach them.

Since 1974, that project has cost $85 million, and it threatens to exceed $200 million, according to a report issued by the Interior Department to the House Appropriations Committee.

Noting that cost, a monograph to be published in next month`s Arizona Law Review calls it ``the largest federal housing program in the country.``

The study, by Arizona attorney Hollis Whitson, also notes the project amounts to ``the largest forced relocation of any racial group in this country since the relocation and internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II.``

Additionally, the dispute has spawned at least a dozen lawsuits that have resulted in payments exceeding $1 million to each of two opposing tribal law firms. It also is costing the government $1 million per year in its own legal costs, Whitson found.

Even the White House has become involved in the dispute. A special envoy of President Reagan warned this year that to force unwilling Navajos from Hopi land could lead to violence.

``There is also sound reason to believe that those Navajo who choose to physically resist relocation will be encouraged and assisted by others, both Indian and non-Indian activists,`` said a memo written for the envoy, former Interior Secretary William Clark.

Clark noted that for generations, each Navajo family ceremonially has buried the umbilical cords of newly born family members on the hogan grounds, and that ``removal (of Navajo) from family lands . . . creates a sense of failure accompanied by severe emotional trauma and withdrawal.``

Many ``would prefer to sacrifice their wasted lives by resisting relocation,`` the document said.

The dispute dates to 1864, when Carson, then a Union cavalry officer, rounded up virtually all the Navajos and Hopis in Arizona and New Mexico and placed them--about 8,200 people--in a camp in Ft. Sumner, N.M.

In 1868, the Indians were released and allowed to return to their homelands. The Navajos, by far the more numerous, were given a sprawling reservation of 16 million acres. But in the center of the Navajo reservation, President Arthur in 1882 established a 2.5 million-acre Hopi Reservation. Now, 11,000 Hopis live here.

According to Clark`s report to Reagan, the original treaty failed to note that the Hopi are a tribe of village dwellers while the Navajos are traditionally nomadic herders.

The Hopi simply moved back to their ancient towns on nearby mesa tops, while the Navajos returned to their hogans on the lowland, including much of the acreage the treaty had declared Hopi reservation.

For the next century, the Navajos continued to occupy Hopi ground while the Hopi complained to the government.

Finally, in 1974, Congress passed a law designed to remove all Navajos from Hopi ground and build them new houses on land controlled by the Navajo Nation.

There were an estimated 10,000 Navajo living in the disputed area at the time, and the law called for paying each family for a new house and moving expenses. Roughly 2,000 families were offered the deal.

In the 1974 law, Congress set a July 7, 1986, deadline for all the Navajos to be off Hopi ground. When it became clear that Navajo resistance would not allow the relocation by then, Reagan sent Clark to act as mediator. But after talking to people like the Yazzies and to some Navajo who refused to move into the suburban-type houses, Clark reported that his efforts had failed.

The memo written for Clark, which he used in his oral report to Reagan in early October, warned of violence should the move be forced by U.S. marshals or troops on the 1,500 Navajos who still refuse to relocate.

Navajo still on Hopi ground have seen the problems encountered by people like the Yazzies and are even more reluctant to move now, added the memo.

``We no have no sheep,`` said Helen Yazzie, sitting in her modern living room. ``With no sheep, I don`t have wool.`` She pointed to the empty loom.